monsbrick

Hi, I have a second profile that I have tried over the past 10 years tried to merge into this one but I have not been successful. I didn’t have access to the email address and it is associated with my maiden name which is Marie Marguerite Agcaoili. I am not hiding it. For years I didn’t swap but I am a total swap addict and I love swapping!! But I get it if you drop me from your swap since I’m illegal.

Thank you for all the gifts and extras. In the comments below I must try to thank every swapper. I don't know why I am here. I don't think it's to receive. I think what I really love about swap-bot is giving. Of course it's fun to do both give and to receive though!

I'm a beginner crafter and not an art student nor an expert crafter. I am also a recovering critical person. I find that I am critical and then surprised when I'm criticized! ha ha ha

Go ahead and ban me from your swap. It's good for me to limit the amount of swaps I'm in! It's healthy and helps me grow. I appreciate The Ban.

A few of my favorite things, in real life I'm becoming quite a hermit. Long ago I used to be an extrovert, a salesperson, put on big parties with big groups of people.

Mostly I spend time with my family and my puppy. We go on walks by the beach which someone pointed out-- I had a dating profile that I'd forgotten about and an old platonic friend read it to me to my horror! And laughter... he said if you're going to try a dating web site you ought to differentiate from all the other people out there and walking on the beach and watching sunset... ok so mostly I watch the sunrise now. Puppy and I watched the sunrise this morning. It was a little windy. We saw only one runner on the weedy trail by the water. Plenty of waterfowl and little animals in the greenery. It may be trite but it's still what I like to do. I also worked for a running company for about a decade. Attending monthly races was part of my work and I got to enter the races for free. My favorite t-shirt on a grandmother who was ahead of me said, "Now no one knows where the hell she is..." I had to try to pass her to see the front: "Grandma started doing marathons!" Now, I could be the grandmother, I'm 53 years old. In our family, my Mom's & Dad's generation there are many family members with dementia. And with the memory loss and other issues, there is an increase in anger. I sense my own anger raising and bubbling over. I guess anger and frustration are good things at times.

I haven't had to date in over 10 years! I've been with my husband, Carl for that long. Carl's daughter is almost 18 years old now. Sabrina has taught me how to do crafts. Saturday mornings, she would wake up early and watch cartoons. And then for fun, she would also watch YouTube videos on how to make duct tape creations for example. Or how to make shrinky dinks. Or recently she has taught herself embroidery. I love the UCSB, University of California Santa Barbara, sweatshirt. Around the block letters, she embroidered little yellow flowers. I don't know how to embroider yet but maybe I'll pick up some of her mad skills I'm more random and junk journally with my sewing since I've never formally learned how to sew. I can definitely color and we have a fun coloring projects we have done together.

Here a few therapeutic activities I love: Collage Coloring Stamping Pairting: watercolor, acrylic, colored pencils, markers Vintage items Junk journals

Paper really gets me, but all kinds of ephemera, textures, styles, types of paper, lately I've been loving art papers from Italy and France.

Thank you for all the die cut creations since it’s one craft I don't do. I don't have a card making machine or tools. I do use scissors and glue the old fashioned way. Or a blade to cut and trim paper. I love upcycling and reusing what I can.

Here are a few more details to help out folks who are trading letters and correspondence with me.

Plurality is probably a good word for me. There are really no types of music I don't like. The music I find myself gravitating towards the most are soft rock hits from the 1970s. My stepdaughter once had a friend ask if we could listen to music from this century! I also like Pop Music though when I am most stressed out there's a whole part of me that switches to jazz. I am not stuck up about the type of jazz though I used to only like straight ahead and bepop jazz. I'm pretty flexible.

As a child, my Dad was a National Dancer from the Philippines. I grew up banging on the ground and listening to the ethnic dancers pounding the floor with their feet, with bamboo sticks, and drums that are sort of flat and lay on the ground.

My grandmother was my piano teacher and then I had a scholarship at a local music conservatory. I quit music because I decided I didn't want to dedicate 8 hours a day practicing piano. That was probably the biggest career decision I made in my life. I think I made it around 16 years old. But my Mom's sister was some super prodigy and she played in Carnegie Hall when she was a kid and took lessons from Horowitz. I figured, I'd never be that good. And she didn't seem very happy with her music though I will say she did become happy very late in her life, after her mid-60s. She did start playing in many four-hand recitals and performed with a group of friends. But it was more like good fun and fundraising and that point. Not as much about the financial success nor the career achievement.

The most classical music I listen to now is when I shop at my local video store. I love to hangout and chat with the owner. There's something community oriented about her shop; though I suspect she makes most of her money from the back room (21+over) room where I never go. Anyway, she's a big classical music fan. She plays fabulous concerts and playlists and I make a weekly or twice weekly visit to her shop.

Here are a few authors on my treasured bookshelf: Hugh Howey, Paolo Bacigalupi, William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Jon Steele, Chuck Hogan, Guillermo del Toro, Francesca Lia Block, Paul Theroux, Oliver Sacks, Anne Rice, Jeffrey Toobin, Angela Duckworth, Neil Gaiman, Anáis Nin, Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, Marguerite Duras, John Muir, Stephen Dubner & Steve Levitt, Dion Fortune, Madame Blavatsky, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Lon Milo Duquette, Danielle Steel, George R.R. Martin, Robert B. Parker.

I'm a big fan of Little Free Libraries and we have over 55 I've listed that I patronize or visit just here in my town! There are even more when you count Berkeley or San Francisco which are about 20-30 minutes away so not far for me. It's like treasure hunting! They are each like treasure chests and I love to add my extra books to the flow of books, maps, magazines, even stationery or pads of paper sometimes I add. Or other bookish things, CDs, DVDs

Murakami’s non-fiction sort of partial memoir or more like a diary/journal book: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running just makes me want to go on and a run and stop writing and stop drawing.

The books I can't get enough of recently seem to be apocalyptic fiction. Not books about the apocalypse, but I think it's after Peak Oil or something along those lines. Anyway, I don't read them because they are in this genre, I just happen to love these-- but then you know how I can be morbid if you've followed my profile this far!

Hugh Howey--everything he writes I basically sit down and cannot sleep until the book is over. I started with The Shell Collector. I ordered his book by accident when I was trying to order Doerr's book by the same title. But then I never went back to read Doerr and I love Howey. I've also got to read the stuff he published online, I"m not a big Kindle reader though I have book readers on my phone and computers. He also did the Wool, Dust, and I read SAND first which is an offshoot and I liked it the best, but it was meant to be read after but I started there. I think I liked Sand the best.

Also Paolo Bacigalupi and I avoided his books like the Windup Girl. Then finally I succumbed at one of our real brick and mortar libraries. It just jumped out at me and I took it home. And found it irresistible. I feel kind of sad when I read his works and yet I cannot stop reading them. I have devoured all his stuff now and I have to wait for him to catch up to my voraciousness.

Similarly, I'm waiting for the next William Gibson book to come out. I've read his books over & over. I tend to love his books on audio. They just sound beautiful read out loud.

I do love poetry and we keep small books in our bathroom of poetry, big anthologies, and haiku and one of the books I'm reading is part of the journals from Jack Kerouac.

Also on my nightstand are Stardust by Neil Gaiman and The Feast of All Saints by Anne Rice.

Honestly, my TBR: to be read book shelves are more than two IKEA bookshelves with books stacked up in front of books. I will include a short list: John Muir, Paul Hawkins, Oliver Sacks, James Beard, Paul Theroux, a few new Hugh Howey audiobooks I've just downloaded on my Audible, Marco Polo's The Travels, The Book of Runes by Ralph Blum, Yukio Tsushima's Territory of Light, Linotte the early diary of Anais Nin, Black Spring by Henry Miller, Art, Espionage & Sex Magick in the New World: Aleister Crowley, and William S. Burroughs & Jack Kerouac's And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks.

We watch Game of Thrones, NCID, P. Allen Smith Garden Home show, Mr, Robot, Barefoot Contessa, various animal, space, and science shows, and the news.

News, I watch oodles of news I like to sweep across all the channels including international and business news.

Recently learned that IBM corporation owns the Weather Channel and I've been geeking out on the shows there.

Podcasts are another favorite for me. I listen to Freakonomics from public radio in NY. And Terry Gross' Fresh Air from Public Radio too.

I listen to Krishna Das' podcasts and I sometimes play his entries over and over. I'm also addicted to kirtan chanting. I don't understand the Hindy holy names. I'm not sure if it's a good thing that the Beatles were into it for a while or if I care. But there are days when I don't listen to anything except Hari Krishna and I sing along and say the words.

Oh yeah, one of my all time favorite books is by JD Salinger, it's a short story called "Franny & Zooey" where Franny starts mouthing and chanting and praying ceaselessly. I get her. Even though I don't think I could explain or teach it to anyone else. I just get it. Not in a magical way. Not for Nirvana. Nor salvation. Just a daily practice. A thing.

Sports-- I don't do any competitive sports. I've done 5Ks, 10Ks, Marathons, I thought at some point that I would become an Ultrarunner. It's not too late. The great thing is that you can be an Ultrarunner here locally (in the San Francisco, California, USA) area at a 5K (that's about 3 miles) on a local trail and you just keep adding a mile per week and before you know it you're doing ultra runs! But alas, I'm not running all that much any more. I'm that kind of a person, where I feel sort of lukewarm about an activity and then I get more and more obsessed and suddenly ... but alas, that's old me.

I used to put on raves: though they were the kind of raves that did not allow alcohol nor drugs. I realize most people associate raves with those two things but I still do events that are not that way. But more and more I am slowing down though we do go to dance events and enjoy electronic dance music.

I do still do Yoga and Swim and Walk my dog daily.